Contentions

Imagine, during World War II, Western intelligence agencies meeting with representatives of Nazi Germany to gather information on Soviet spying. Pretty hard to imagine, no?

And yet it now emerges that European intelligence agencies, including those of Britain, France, Germany, and Spain, have met with representatives of the Assad regime to share information on European jihadists who have come to Syria to fight the regime. The spooks’ concerns are understandable since there is a very real danger that jihadists who travel to fight in Syria could return to stage acts of terrorism in their homeland.

Yet the fact that the intelligence representatives of these countries, which have broken diplomatic relations with Damascus, are willing to meet with Assad’s thugs is very telling–and what it tells us is that they have basically accommodated themselves to the perpetual existence of the Assad regime. And why shouldn’t they, when the U.S., which would have to lead any coalition to oust Assad, refuses to do so?

President Obama has even discontinued providing non-lethal aid to the Syrian opposition for fear of it falling into the wrong hands. Instead he has struck a deal to eliminate Syria’s chemical-weapons stockpile, which essentially makes the U.S. a partner of the Syrian regime.

It is only a small step from where we are today toward tacit toleration for Assad’s atrocities, much as the West provided tacit support for Saddam Hussein’s regime in its war against Iran in the 1980s. Maybe there really is no other choice left in Syria–maybe the only alternative to Assad’s thuggery is the thuggery of al-Qaeda on the other side–but if so, that’s a pretty damning indictment of the moral and practical failure of Western (read: American) policy in Syria.